About Me-email is... grant.go@aol.com

Friday, October 16, 2009

VICTORY for Powell river,Port Alberni,Campbell river and Cowichan

Finally a good news story, Catalyst loses it`s court battle, they have to pay their tax bill, ALL of their tax bill.

This little story might not mean much to most of you but the implications were serious, here`s a little background on this court case, Catalyst, a pulp company who has operations in Powell river,Port Alberni,Cowichan and Campbell river, out of the blue last spring they decided they wern`t going to pay 80% of their municipal tax bill, amongst the four towns Catalyst owed 92 million$ in tax, what Catalyst did was give each town 6 million$ and told the towns to shove it, that`s all your getting, the 68$ million dollar shortfall would have had devastating effects on those towns.

First off, for those not paying attention small town BC has been hurting for years, 40000 forestry jobs have vanished, a direct result of Gordon Campbell`s forestry policies, if Catalyst had won this court case residential taxpayers in these towns would have seen their tax rate double, people in these towns can`t afford that, these towns are already having to deal with townfolks cutting back on their spending.

A little more background, Gordon Campbell cut the school tax portion of industries tax bill in half last year, towns have been lowering rates to try and help these industries, and, as you know as of july 2010 these industries will be paying NOT ONE DIME in PST....That burden my friends will be falling on the public,falling on the little guy, but obviously these gifts,including vast tracts of land that used to belong to the people before the Campbell GANG illegally gave them away was not enough, anyways, so Catalyst puts a gun to the heads of these towns and said "SUE US".......Well, we did,we won,so pay up, I of course expect these companies to appeal the ruling, not because they will win but because that`s just the way these companies operate.

The implications of this ruling was huge, I don`t know if you are aware of this but if Catalyst had won this case every industrial business throughout BC would be in court, none of them would pay their bill and every town would be in trouble.

The reason I was so pissed at Catalyst for doing this is.......It`s not like Powell river or Port Alberni sprung a NEW giant tax bill on these companies, the tax rate has been in effect forever, Catalyst knew what their bill was, Catalyst of course made the case that ....Boo hoo, we`re not making any money, business is in the dumps....To which I say this ---Hello Catalyst,you want to play, tell you what, we`ll cut your taxes in half when you don`t make much money but when you have boom years we are going to double your tax bill, and if you have a really big year we will triple it! Can you imagine, does Joe public get to tell the tax man,get lost,I lost my job, here`s 20% of my tax bill, or people who had their investments decimated, can they say,hey,sorry man, I`m hurting, take a hike,sue me.(Read about the Catalyst court case they lost here)http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Catalyst+loses+court+fight+with+coastal+towns+over+refusing+taxes/2111810/story.html

Bit by bit, layer by layer, the corporation is taking Canada apart, Stagnant wages, closures,threats, and the biggest one, outsourcing to slave labour countries, I`m not saying that the workers in these countries are actually slaves, but, there is no way we will ever be able to compete when these workers are paid a couple of dollars a day to work, forget the spin about modernizing,productivity,efficiencies, those are nothing but code words for ..Cheap labour and outsourcing, if Catalyst closes shop or goes bankrupt so be it, better now than later, the time has come people, every year the corporation and their compensation get greedier and greedier,pay less and less and demand more kickbacks, either we take back our country or give it away, you know where I stand, and you?

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I stand with you on this Grant. It's well past time that we started to zip our wallets, not our lips. It seems the only thing that makes a corporation pay attention is watching their bottom line shrink...that's one of few things we can do to level the playing field. Buy NOTHING that you don't absolutely NEED...eventually, it will have the desired effect.